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Saturday, July 26th, 2008
beable
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12:34a
Yet more in the random world of crack
What I saw: Sushi can drink
What the sign actually said: Sushi with can drink
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(comment on this)
beable
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12:21a
Yatta!
I did it!
I have managed to win a game of Kingsburg in a 5-player game against the expert AI while building 15 buildings INCLUDING the Cathedral. Oh yeah, I'm good.
(For those curious: --> Cathedral, --> Market, --> Guard Tower, --> Fortress, --> Embassy)
current mood:  accomplished
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mrrules
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9:00a
SysAdmin Day
I still think SysAdmin Day should be on 24/7.
-g.
current mood:  sleepy
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(5 comments | comment on this) Friday, July 25th, 2008
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erich_schneider
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9:32a
More building
In our latest building adventure, last night we turned this into this (inside). It's a 30 feet wide by 11 feet high dome from Shelter Systems, which we will use as a shade structure at Burning Man. ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) miriamdema and mayorjim kindly let us use a flat part of their property in Tujunga to set it up.
One not-so-comic moment occurred when we were trying to get one of the poles in; clynne was holding a joint and I was bending the pole to get it in, when my grip slipped and it sprang back, smacking me in the mouth. After some cursing and waiting for the pain to die down, we deicded to switch places, get that pole in, and take a break. Well, we switched places, but then Connie-Lynne lost her grip on the pole too and it smacked her in the nose. We then wound up taking something like a half-hour break while she iced her face. Afterward, we tried a different technique for getting the pole in and it went in with no trouble or injuries. Lesson learned: PVC pipes can really hurt!
We also learned that we can't get this up by ourselves; Jim and later Miriam came out to help us for the final assembly and their help was vital. Fortunately we will have a third campmate and hopefully other people will be happy to help wrestle a pole or two. Thanks very much, Miriam and Jim, for letting us use your land, helping with the assembly, and feeding us afterward!
Watch Connie-Lynne's journal for a photo essay similar to the one she did for the hexayurt.
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lyda222
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11:13a
Birthday Actual Down, One More to Go...
Mason's birthday ACTUAL was a lot of fun. Despite the fact that I had a dream the night before that I forget the classroom presents, everything went off without a hitch. As I did folders on Thursday, I snuck a peek in the classroom before I left and I saw Mason wearing his birthday crown and everyone was whacking each other with the pencils we gave them.
My folks showed up around ten (almost exactly when Shawn predicted they would), and then we all headed over to pick up Mason. I gave them the two penny tour, and Ms. Fry, the librarian, gave them an enthusiastic welcome.
Como Zoo/Como Town amusment park was hot, muggy and a bit chaotic, despite mostly hurding only adults and one child, but I think Mason had a blast.
Then it was back to our house for presents. Many Legos were presented, and, my mother, bless her soul, have Mason a bag of quarters to squander at the coffeeshop on arcade games. Such a thoughtful present! Mason and I both enjoyed the heck out of a handful of those this morning.
Mason gave grandpa the tour of all the video games upstairs, and Shawn, my mom, and I all laid about chatting and recovering from Como Town with much lemonade. After they left, seanmmurphy came by while Mason was in the tub, and Mason looked at him and said, "Did you bring me a present??"
More Legos. Shawn and I are quite happy as we're both hugely fond of Lego kits, so really they were gifts for the whole family.
Despite being pretty pooped out (and not entirely done with my "homework,") Sean and I headed off to Wyrdsmiths. naomikritzer sold a short story to Baen's Universe, and so she bought coffee for everyone, as is our tradition. I got a bit wired on Thai coffee, and so got almost no sleep last night. Now I'm tired, but happy.
You?
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browneyedgirl65
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7:13a
current status of ADA Restoration Act
Sounds like it's moving forward, albeit slowlyLast year, in June 2007, the “ADA Restoration Act of 2007” (H.R. 3195 / S. 1881) was introduced in Congress to “restore” the ADA. The focus of the restoration is on the definition of who is an “individual with a disability.” The U.S. Supreme Court limited the definition in 1999. The ADA Restoration Act wants the determination of whether an individual has a disability to be made “without regard to mitigating measures,” such as hearing aids or cochlear implants, that an individual may use. Restoring the definition will help ensure that individuals who use hearing aids or cochlear implants qualify for protection under the ADA and obtain reasonable accommodations. What happened in 1999 that needs fixing?The Supreme Court held in these three cases that, in determining whether a person has a disability under the ADA, any measures taken to control the effects of the person's impairment-such as medication or therapy-must be considered. For example, someone who controls the effects of depression through medication may be unable to claim the protections of the ADA, even if discriminated against because of the depression. So the fact that hearing aids happen to work quite well for me pretty much leaves me unprotected. (Fortunately here in California, I have other resources, not to mention a generally more enlightened employer population.)
By the way, this has implications for nondisabled folks. If your employer thinks you are impaired in some way and fires you for that, the revisions would protect you as well in that case. (And yes, this kind of thing actually happens, there was a case recently where a woman's employer thought she was depressed and fired her.)
Ongoing developments are covered at this blog: The ADA Amendments Act of 2008
current mood:  thoughtful
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sylvantechie
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12:18a
Sulam - epilogs and other loose ends, part 3
The Sasima - The Sasima continued on much as they had been. The chaos and disruption in the larger world didn't especially affect them. Particular individuals had their lives changed, and some areas were harder and others easier to get to for a time, but as a people the Catastrophe largely passed them by. However, there were two lasting effects. First, they distanced themselves somewhat from the Order; various group leaders felt that the Order took more than it gave and that the Sasima first and foremost had to look out for themselves. Second, and no doubt related to the first, there developed among them a small but persistent following of an old, obscure god of balance. In time this, rather than the Order, came to be the main spiritual channel. Though never numerous, the Sasima manage to be consistent and persistent survivors through the ages.
The Order - The Catastrophe, and more to the point the prevention of much worse catastrophe, really brought the order out of obscurity and into the center of worldly attention and events. After much internal debate the Order decided to embrace the publicity rather than fight it. The core remained the druids, but it slowly opened up to accept more different people of more different backgrounds. It's not entirely clear whether this openness and expansion was a cause or effect of the Order's divergence from the Sasima. Probably it was some of each.
In addition to having a wider variety of people in its hierarchical organization, it established a number of pseudo-independent branches. The first and most famous branch was the Border Wardens, founded a decade after the Catastrophe by the famous heroes Kel and Penelope, and lead by the latter for the first half century of its existence. The Border Warden's organizational structure and relationship with the larger Order served as a model for a number of other Order-related groups as well. The Border Wardens and other groups served both as a way to accommodate and incorporate larger numbers of people, and as something of a system of checks and balances on the Order's increased political / secular power and weight.
Despite its fame the Order managed to keep the memory groves an internal secret for a long time. Eventually the word got out about their existence, but even after that the exact locations were closely guarded information. In response to all this attention the Order increased the number of memory groves while shrinking the size of each one. The Border Wardens for certain, and most likely several other groups too, maintained additional groves that were, if not their own, at least weren't generally known about and/or used by the rest of the Order and other groups.
The Mortens - Madeleine's role in the Catastrophe, both ill and good, was never widely known. Likewise, the Morten's relationship with the dragons and the Lady has been kept out of the public eye. Galix was killed while he was in Caburg. The perpetrators were never found, but the presumption is that some Yuan-ti group was responsible. Nate never married. Moira grew up in Bryghtgar Realm and eventually inherited the Morten lands there. Late in life she married one of the more stable Arcenbryghts, and so the Morten name came to an end. The bloodline did not. Moira, and at least some of her descendants, kept in touch with Esregal and a few other dragons. The details of how long and to what extent are unknown. Or rather, nobody who knows is saying. It's certainly true that people of that line always seem to be able to pull together whatever resources they need for whatever project it is they want to do, and none of them has ever sought much in the way of worldly power or standing.
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(2 comments | comment on this) Thursday, July 24th, 2008
allyscully
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8:53p
WHO'S GOING TO SEE THE X-FILES MOVIE AT MIDNIGHT?
MEEEEEEEEE
oh my god it's like I'm twelve again
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clynne
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4:55p
SPACE DOME
Tonight, Erich and I are going to test-build our space dome up at mayorjim and miriamdema's place. THIS IS VERY EXCITING.
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montyy0
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5:44p
systemic efficiency of energy use
I'm on a bit of a kick about organized use of energy. As I mentioned in another post, I'm sort of a fan of heat pumps over electric heating elements, inspired by page 120 (of the current draft) of this:
http://withouthotair.com/
Some more neat stuff on heat pumps can be found here:
http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/space_heating_cooling/index.cfm/mytopic=12610
http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/space_heating_cooling/index.cfm/mytopic=12700
That got me thinking, though, about a modular, systemic, self-adjusting home system. I'm imagining a system that's fully integrated and controlled... not off the grid, but rather leveraging the grid (and likely using "sell-back" some of the time.) I'm going to riff a bit on this topic, just for yucks, but a lot of this would involve having some central transmission buses and storage systems for heat, electricity, mechanical motion, water, and possibly other things, along with many sensors and valves... essentially, a "smart" system. Basically, thinking in terms of what types of energy you need (mechanical, electrical, heat) and what you have, and trying to do bookkeeping. I imagine things like "are the solar panels hotter than the hot water heater? If so, run the water through that. Is the windmill running? run the mechanical water pump... otherwise consider using the electric pump. Are the batteries charged? Is the local water tank full? Can we pump water up to the storage tank? Is the prius battery full? Should we sell back power? Can we run the a/c compressor off the mechanical bus from the windmill, or do we have to run it off of the electric grid?
Apparently, there are deep-ground heat sinks used for heat pumps sometimes, but combining things seems good: solar heating can be a radiator at night, having a mechanical system that can be driven by multiple sources and used by multiple sources seems to make sense.
I'm a big fan of early industrial revolution innovations that could be optimized for modern use... they used to run machines off of shafts, belts, and pulleys, so a single source of mechanical motion, like a water wheel, could power an array of machines. If a system could run the fans for heating and cooling, the compressors for air conditioners and refrigerators and heat pump heaters off of that, then having multiple mechanical sources (say, a windmill, a water turbine below your house water reservoir, an electric motor, and a diesel motor) could conceivably run a bunch of mechanical systems. Similarly, I don't see much reason why the heat pump, a/c, and fridge couldn't run on a shared coolant system, and leverage waste heat from the furnace, solar panels, stove, oven, and even fireplace. And the electricity could also extend appliances, lighting, computers, and other home electric uses to battery charging, selling back to the grid, and so forth. And excess heat needs could be provided with natural gas... I'm inclined to have separate burners at each location for that, because transporting heat that's high enough to catch things on fire seems unwise, but, e.g. if the system is smart, then the clothes drier can take input from a system pre-heated by the furnace or heat pump so it doesn't have to heat as much to get to the right temperature.
From a systems point of view, there are some concerns, since with this much stuff tied together, there is more coupling for failures... if the compressor system breaks down, you could lose refrigeration and a/c and heating and so forth... and it's possible that there are big efficiency hits for using refrigerator coolant in an air conditioner or vice-versa, or for having a variable speed shaft system in the mechanical core of the house, which would need a lossy governor to keep it at the optimal main shaft speed to be geared to all the mechanical pumps, generators, and fans.
It seems, though, that these are largely things that have been solved in the past in specialized systems, and the major thing that prevents this sort of thing is that we're trained to think of systems as single appliances, rather than as modules in an integrated system. And because of that, interoperability is not something that's generally designed into these systems, so it really, at this point, would involve a lot of "homebrew" design. I've tried to look at more mundane home automation systems to control relatively obvious stuff... I'd like to use one of the home automation systems to integrate with a central computer, and it seems like it'd be a no-brainer to use the weather station thingie we have to make smart decisions about things like the sprinklers and the thermostat controls... and I'd like to be able to use the web browser on my phone to tell the house I'll be home in 30 minutes, so change the a/c to comfort level rather than baseline. One would think there would be sprinkler controllers, thermostats, and such (as well as TiVo type thingies and lighting control) that would be easy to integrate, but there seems to be a lot of complexity and non-standard crap that's an impediment, as well as a large added cost for stuff that's intended to be this versatile, when it's available at all.
This is symptomatic of another pet peeve: producers of goods don't like interoperability, either because they just don't care or think about it most of the time, or because they actively prefer to have a proprietary system that doesn't integrate so they can get market lock-in or force people to buy compatible stuff from them. The idea of standard, interchangeable parts is no longer very popular, so while old-school things like screws, light bulbs, lumber, and plumbing fixtures have some standard rules, many new things have weird plugs, attachments, interfaces, and so forth. There is a sad lack of standardization in terms of everything from GPS communication protocols to interconnect cables to data formats to DC adapters for electronics. If I wanted to have a home DC power bus that would charge my cell phone, laptop, and such, and run various other electronics, I can't do it: even if they all run on DC, or even all on 12volt DC, there are a zillion different plugs and connectors and weird "smart" systems in chargers that aren't well documented, leading to one or two stages of inefficient transformers and rectifiers in each electronic item. And many electronics manufacturers not only adopt the "why would anyone want to do that" attitude preventing unanticipated but legitimate uses, they even seem to buckle under to pressure from media companies to actively block things: I found the other day that, even when playing a HOMEMADE DVD, apples disable the "take a screen shot" feature while a DVD is playing, so if you want to take a still frame from YOUR OWN CONTENT you're blocked. Because of delusions that only pirates would ever want to do that, and they, apparently, aren't expected to be able to work around that... a typical case of lack of interoperability hurting the typical user by putting up impediments that someone with a profit motivation could get around.
We now have digital control systems at our fingertips that are fantastically better than what the integration engineers of the 19th and early 20th century had to work with, and yet we've abandoned the desire to leverage those for integrated systems in many cases. Maybe I'm being naive about the costs of coupled systems (as I mentioned earlier) but I think it's time for the pendulum to swing back toward integration... in addition to the HVAC and energy in the home, my computer should automatically talk to my laptop, cell phone, land-line handset, prius phonebook, TiVo, and so forth every time they are collectively in bluetooth/ wifi/ whatever range, and do the intelligent syncing of calendars, backing up home directories, and so forth. When I look things up on google maps, it should upload the waypoints into the Prius nav system, and into my garmin hand GPS and the GPS bluetooth thingie that I use with my phone. And I should be able to ssh into this from my laptop, my phone, or any other internet-equipped device. And when I have, I should be able to check or change lights/ sprinklers/ HVAC system controls, and schedule TV recordings, and start downloads, and check or modify the grocery lists, and leave reminders for myself or others, and so forth and so on. And while we're at it, anyone anywhere should be able to pick up any telephone, push a "get your attention" button, and say "I want to talk to Mark Montague in Altadena" and get connected to me, maybe with "Is that the one on Alegre Lane?" first to disambiguate. And there should be a cryptographically secure system where if I don't want my phone number to be available, there can be a key-exchange where they can send a message asking me to give them a one-time or permanent invitation to contact me without them ever knowing my actual phone number and address, yet being assured that they're interacting with me because of some public-key confirmation.
I may be sad that the 21st century doesn't have the lunar vacations and flying cars, but I'm even more sad that the sorts of ways we could easily be leveraging interoperability and modern computer systems are blocked by short-sightedness, greed, apathy, and stupidity (and maybe a few technical issues, but not ones I consider show-stoppers-- cars, for example, run the alternator, power steering, a/c, water pump, smog pump, and fan off of one mechanical bus...)
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irilyth
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7:54p
Diets
My pants are starting to get uncomfortably tight, and my weight has been creeping upwards, more noticeably lately -- I had had "between 200 - and 210" in mind for a while, but I'm now solidly on the path to 220. That's no good.
I recently discovered the no S diet: No snacks, sweets, or seconds, except on days that start with S. That's it.
It feels an awful lot like an implementation of the more general Don't Eat Like An Idiot Diet (which I think a friend coined), which I would summarize for myself as "Don't overeat, don't eat stupid things, don't eat when you're not hungry". The No S rules are easier to remember, though.
For me personally, no seconds is pretty easy. I don't habitually eat seconds, nor feel the urge to, except at social events where we order a bunch of food and there's some left over. Especially pizza, but also things like Thai and Indian, I'll often go back for a second plate after everyone's had some. Those sorts of things most often happen on weekends, though, so I may still get to indulge that vice a little.
No snacks is harder, but doable. I eat when I'm not hungry because it feels good, and when I'm stressed, doing something that feels good helps a little, or at least is very tempting. Especially at work, where I have food in my desk; so the key to this will probably be taking all of the food out of my desk that isn't clearly a meal. (I keep some food on hand for lunches when I don't bring leftovers, when I want to have dinner before volleyball, etc.)
No sweets is gonna be killer, though -- I often have a square of chocolate after a meal, and, well, just, dang.
The guy's web site is written a common-sense straightforward style that really speaks to me. His arguments about how we're naturally suited via evolution to be non-snackers seem a little thin, but the general philosophy, and his thoughts about habits and how to form them and what makes things Easy and Hard, resonate with my own experience. So, we'll see.
I found the diet through his shovelglove page, and I might give that a try too. (Or maybe I just want to own a sledgehammer. :^) His urban ranger page is entertaining too, but not very appealing to me personally; for starters, most of the places I drive to (work, Trader Joe's, volleyball in Bunker Hill) are not in fact within an hour walk. But I may keep it in mind.
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montyy0
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4:47p
thermoelectric material for scavenging waste heat in cars
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN2433580320080724?sp=true
continuing in my theme of whining about Reuters' science writing, while I love the idea of scavenging waste heat, something that never seems to make it in these sorts of articles is that efficiency doesn't just depend on a temperature, it usually depends on a temperature gradient between a hot thing and a cool thing. So the engine block, or exhaust, or whatever is hot, and this stuff will extract electricity from it somehow causing it to be cooler, but it presumably needs to still radiate heat in order to keep the "cool side cool," and that heat is paid as an entropy tax. I'm also annoyed that they say the old material has a "rating" of .71 and the new one has a "rating" of 1.5 without giving units or saying what the heck an "rating" is. I would expect an efficiency rating to be between 0 and 1, so 1.5 seems not bloody likely. It must be something like watts or watt-seconds generated per (minute? gallon of gas? temperature difference?)
Anyway, whining notwithstanding, things that can efficiently scavenge waste heat are good. And I love the concept of looking at the organization in energy as well as its energy content: heat is disorganized, and electricity is organized, so using organized energy for heat pumps is a lot more efficient than using a big resistor to just make heat. And, in another sense, you can use a heat difference to create a pressure difference, and use that to drive a turbine or something, but because you're not going to completely cool down the exhaust gas, there's inherently a lot of waste heat that's just never used... in a system that has "organized" energy like electricity, mechanical motion, spring energy, and so forth, the losses are from imperfect transmission more than inefficient extraction, and tend to be much lower... unless what you're after is heat anyway: if you only need heat, it's better (CO2 emissions aside) to burn gas at the source (or use solar heating without any pointless electricity stage.)
I'm having visions of some sort of integrated home system that tracks and integrates heat, electricity, and mechanical supply and demand: is the windmill turning? is the solar/thermal system hot?
I think this calls for a separate brainstorming post.
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montyy0
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3:29p
differential science reporting on aurora borealis
There's a scientific finding published in the news over the past few days, about the coupling between solar wind, the Earth's magnetosphere, and the aurora borealis.
What strikes me, though, is that the Reuters article on it has "summarized" it for the common audience to the point where, as a moderately educated person, I found that the summary impeded my knowledge of what the result was. Essentially, in an effort to explain this in terms that anyone could understand, they obfuscated it and removed information.
I found a Canadian Broadcasting article that shows that you can accomplish the same task without such critical failures.
There's nothing factually wrong in the Reuters version, but they just rattle off factoids about "energy" and "magnetic field lines" and "reconnection" without explaining the terms; it's like "scientists discovered new ways to string smart words together," as if the public only should care about the mystical force lines imbued with energy... essentially, only caring about the aesthetic of the description while entirely missing the causality of it... the CBC article does a far better job at describing what's really going on: the fluctuations in the solar wind distort the "bubble" and "teardrop tail" of the magnetosphere, and under some circumstances the deformation is such that it's unstable, and collapses back, releasing energy. The idea of something deforming and snapping back is something people can easily understand, and it's kind of neat, and the sort of thing that will appeal to science fans.
The press seems to think that non-experts are only interested in hearing the fancy words and some trivia (magnetic energy explosion a third of the way to the moon) without caring about why scientists might care about this stuff. I have no idea if such people exist; I'd expect there to be a very small window between complete apathy and caring about a rough but accurate explanation of the actually relevant part. If they do exist, though, I don't have much respect for them, and I don't think the reporters and educators should declare them to be the "target audience."
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ouraboros
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2:33p
Why both spouses need to understand the finances
Apparently this woman who handled the family finances didn't pay the mortgage for *42* months, and shredded the notices from the bank indicating non-payment rather than say, confide in her husband the truth of their situation. Plus the day of the foreclosure sale, shot herself. Now he's out not only the money and the house, but no more wife!
Y'know, I'm all for efficiencies in specialization. It does take my husband a lot less time than it does for me to back up the photos, or change the oil. But I certainly know how to check the Five Precious Humours under the hood of a vehicle (oil, transmission, radiator, brake and steering), and he knows how to mend a hole in his pants, even if those are not our preferred tasks.
I am utterly baffled as to how people can leave something as huge as their financial future in so completely to someone else's judgment. Yes, that includes using a full-service broker -- they resemble overpriced bookies to me ("I got this great tip on a horse, I mean, stock"). The spouse may not have to know the gory day-to-day details, but at least a regular check in! I guess I am really lucky that mostly my financial expectations are in line with the people I spend my time with.
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remmer
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2:00p
Comic Relief
I've recently discovered that I've been reading comics. That is to say, I've been visiting the local comic store regularly and coming back home with comics nearly as regularly.
I got turned on to Dork Tower and PvP many years back. A year or so ago, I discovered The Brave and The Bold. When I was a kid, there was a Batman/Superman animated show on Saturday mornings. Sometimes is was a Batman episode and sometimes it was a Superman episode -- you never knew. The Brave and The Bold is similar in that each issue focuses on two superheroes. From issue to issue, the two superheroes change; usually both, but sometimes just one.
More recently, I've been following Star Trek: Assignment: Earth and Trinity (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman). The Star Trek comic has excellent stories, but I'm not fond of the drawing style. I'm not sure about Trinity yet. I'm going to give it a couple more issues and then either stick or split. There's also a Mirror Universe Star Trek comic out now. Only one issue so far, but so far so good.
I've also found a couple of nice short-run series: American Dream (think female Captain America) and a Batman Confidential arc with Batgirl and Catwoman. I suppose I should say "Barbara Gordon Batgirl," as I've discovered that there are others.
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beable
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4:58p
Today's *headdesk* - let's edit the mail folder.
This is what some of our developers are using to check mail on the system
systemname$ more viewmail
if [ -f /usr/spool/mail/$LOGNAME ]
then
vi /usr/spool/mail/$LOGNAME
else
echo "No mail."
fi
systemname$
They thought it was a system program (it's actually in their business code app directory). Suddenly I understand why syslog sometimes logs errors about /usr/spool/mail/$LOGNAME.lock. These same developers are the sort who easily go home leaving "viewmail" open - cuz dude - they're checking their mail!
This viewmail program is part of an entire directory of business code - some of which is shell scripts created and maintained by our developers,some of which is "programs" (read: shell scripts) created by the original consultants who wrote the code (and our developers assume that these are programs native to the system like ls, or rm). It took about three-four go-rounds on e-mail of me asking about a specific other one of these "programs" before gleaning the "oh, we didn't write that" from the developer I was trying to help.
I gotta wonder what the original writer of "viewmail" was thinking. Were mailx and mail that annoying? I can see not asking for an actual mail client as the only reason to read mail on these boxes is to see the output of crons and stuff, but was there secretly something they wanted to gain by doing it this way? I'll never know.
Part of me thinks wonders if it is just truly old school. You know, like walking uphill in the snow both ways.
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montyy0
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10:56a
factcheck on health insurance covering viagra vs contraception
I found this sort of interesting, in that this flagship of inequity seems to have taken hold as a meme despite evidence that it's no longer (per factcheck, anyway) much of an issue in reality:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/mccains_viagra_moment.html
This reminds me a bit of the disproven vaccine-autism association that never seems to go away.
I wonder if the imagery that ties the inequity directly not just to gender but to sexuality (via the also-loaded enabling of freedom for sexual expression) is part of the reason for this being a very tenacious notion.
p.s. why do all spellcheckers and dictionaries I've checked say "disproven" is wrong and should be "disproved"? I have an aesthetic preference for using "disproven" or "proven" as an adjective while leaving disproved as a transitive verb, e.g. "the claim is (dis)proven" vs "I (dis)proved the claim." Does this make me a bad English-speaker? I have no idea where I picked up this habit...
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beable
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12:39p
And sometimes the Group Therapy column makes me weep for humanity
So the question was A reader writes: I've been in a great relationship with my boyfriend for 2 1/2 years. I love him. But lately, my friends have been causing some friction between us. We used to attend parties my friends invited us to. But he's incredibly quiet and introverted, and ends up drinking in a corner by himself. In social situations, he only speaks when spoken to. He says my friends have given up having conversations with him and he feels uncomfortable around them. Now, he won't come out with me if my friends are involved. So do I party with my pals on my own or make him come out with me so he can suffer in silence? I want him to enjoy himself, but he treats my friends and family with the same distant politeness as the first day he met them.
And while one person observed "hey this isn't fun for your boyfriend - introverts find crowds draining" than most people seemed to reply on how the boyfriend is trying to drown the precious party-girl's fun times.
Nobody asked the most important question of "is he happy to stay home while you go and party with your pals"? Apparently in the world of mundania the answer to that is such a default no that nobody even asks that question. Stupid sheeple.
Dear "Party Girl who thinks she can fix her boyfriend by turning him into a goddamn social butterfly":
Why would you want to drag your boyfriend out to gatherings so he can "suffer in silence". In what way does this possibly benefit either of you?
If your boyfriend objects to you going out with your friends, that's one thing. Drop him like a hot potato.
But if he's happier staying home when you go off and party - without the need to play shepherd I might add, what exactly is the problem?
Or right, the problem is that you and your friends are mundane sheeple and probably if your boytoy doesn't go with you to all the events it doesn't really count as having a boyfriend, and he must not love you or something. Because if you just try try to change him, you can turn him into an effervescent social butterfly. And won't that be FUN!
current mood:  irritated
current music: Family Snapshots - Peter Gabriel
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(2 comments | comment on this)
browneyedgirl65
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8:41a
steampunk amusement (x2)
:-)
I'll pass on the mustache, though.
The second one below...if I understand it, bingo! ;-)
Your result for The Steampunk Style Test... The Explorer4% Elegant, 30% Technological, 50% Historical, 76% Adventurous and 32% Playful! 
You are the Explorer, the embodiment of steampunk’s adventuring spirit. For you, clothing should be rugged and reliable, and just as functional as it is attractive. You probably prefer khaki or leather, and your accessories are as likely to include weapons as technological gizmos. You probably wear boots and gloves, and maybe a pith helmet. Most of what you wear is functional, and if you happen to wear goggles people had better believe that you use them. In addition to Victorian exploration gear, your outfit probably includes little knickknacks from your various travels. Above all, you are a charming blend of rugged Victorian daring and exotic curiosity.
Try our other Steampunk test here. Take The Steampunk Style Test at HelloQuizzy
Your result for The Steampunk Archetype Test... The Aetherist Bodger27 Swashbuckling Engineer, 38 Crazy Clockwork Tinkerer, 7 Charming Noble, 33 Roguish Pirate, 15 Mechanical Fian and 58 Aetherist Bodger! 
The aether carries the information, the aether is information. You are one of the few who know the ins and outs of Aether Terminals. You can access information across the Aethersphere, tapping into the Aetherpipes of anyone you want and stealing the information stored in their datatanks. Some think of you as a myth, a legend created to scare people. You are no myth or legend, you are quite real and you are currently reading the Queen’s AetherMissives. Take The Steampunk Archetype Test at HelloQuizzy
current mood:  amused
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